Motorola Atrix 4G First-Look Review Discussion

[J.R. Nelson]

AT&T's Motorola Atrix 4G is one of the first phones to hit the market with a dual-core CPU -- in this case, it’s NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 platform that powers this beast. Continuing the cutting-edge trend is a 960 x 540 qHD display, fingerprint scanner and unique webtop capability.

Despite having this cutting-edge smartphone only a short time, I'd like to share my first thoughts on it. An in-depth review will be available when I've had more time for testing.

Read the full content of this Article: Motorola Atrix 4G First-Look Review

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[Varjak]

This could have been a real game-changer; but Motoblur, the ridiculous arrangement and pricing of the various docks/netbook accessories, and forcing apps like Vlingo on us really muddy the waters.

On the plus side, I do like the idea of the fingerprint scanner. I think the review is a bit off in saying it doesn't make the phone more secure. With THIS phone they also make you create a passcode; but by using the fingerprint scanner, everyone will have a semi-secure phone at worst and they'll use it regularly. The passcode is only a backup. On some phones, you don't need to create a passcode at all. As with many things, if it's easy enough to use the safe method, most people will.

[weegie]

Does the Motorola shell allow the screen lock BS to be disabled? as in, turn the device on and use it.

Look forward to seeing how the new Tegra goes with the battery life.

I'm sure the webtop idea will appeal to some with certain needs that want something ergonomically better than the actual device itself, I'd rather use a proper workstation notebook like the Dell precisions I use for work firstly, and if I wanted something more compact, most likely a netbook with a proper OS that isn't tied to anything, tegra 2 might be really fast for a pocket device, but it doesn't even outperform a single core atom running XP with browsing etc, an atom is slow compared to a low voltage i series, and then there's full speed i series which I'm used to using in my notebook, magnitudes of difference performance wise.

It's a cool concept that reality would probably overtake the "cool" factor pretty quickly for me personally, especially when the price of the device and accessories starts to add up v the performance and one piece slab aspect of a netbook.
Will be interesting to see how popular it becomes all the same.

[Drillbit]

I don't know if the lockscreen can be disabled. I know it can be changed. There are lockscreen apps that can let you access calls, text messages, email, gmail without unlocking the lockscreen. Calls go through without unlocking the screen.

Lockscreen behavior differs from phone to phone. The stock Android like on the Nexus S does require you to unlock the screen before you do anything. Except for incoming calls which go through directly.

But other brands create their own lockscreens which often display messages like failed calls, email and text and lets you access them directly without unlocking the lockscreen. I don't know about the Atrix; one may have to try this directly with a demo unit. I do know that with HTC Sense phones, you can pull down the notification curtain from the top without unlocking the screen. That lets you access and responds to the notifications directly.

[Adama D. Brown]

Does the Motorola shell allow the screen lock BS to be disabled? as in, turn the device on and use it.

If it's the same as on the Droid Pro, no, it doesn't. However, there are third party apps that do this.

[weegie]

Seems pretty dumb not to be able to kill swipe to unlock stuff at an OS level, but if there is apps to do it, I guess it doesn't matter.

Thanks for your comments Drillbit and Adama